By Laurença d'Orey
Writing an article about French music when you’re French doesn’t sound very daring I admit. The truth is that, beyond the fact that our cheeses and wines are probably the best in the world, we also have an excellent music scene that is often undervalued. And I’m not talking about Bob Sinclar and David Guetta. So what exactly is the French Touch?
Let’s go back to the 80s and to your side of the Channel. Thatcher had decided to forbid any kind of gathering involving repetitive music and as a result raving had to move to France. And thus French electronic music was born. It started off slowly and it was not before the 90s, while you were still suckling your mothers’ teets, that the French Touch took its first real steps. In 1995 Saint Germain’s album “Boulevard” received the warmest welcome it could ever get from international music critics. In what followed the names and songs speak for themselves: Air, Daft Punk, Laurent Garnier (who was the first one to ever use the saxophone in electronic music), Etienne de Crécy, Arnaud Rebotini, Phoenix, The Hacker and Cassius amongst many others.
The expression French Touch itself originates from the phrase “We give a French Touch to our house music” which could be found on jackets created by the designer Eric Morand. Nowadays it is a generic term used broadly to talk about commercial DJs (Martin Solveig and all the others), some more intense/dark tech (Gesaffelstein) and the funky French house music called nu-disco based on samples from the 70s/80s. Some labels such as Ed Banger Records, Bromance Records, Marble and Maison Kitsuné are the representations of this fertile frenchie musical movement.
The French Touch generations are all different. A form of decentralisation in electronic music marked the “Justice”/late 2000s generation. And the possibilities are endless; thanks to the Internet you don’t have to come from Paris to make it any more. At the same time paradoxically, new French artists are reacting to the technological era by renewing their trust in vinyls and collaborating in harmony with the older generation. Brodinski, Gesaffelstein, Club Cheval, Rone, Woodkid, The Juveniles, Lescop, Surkin, Bobmo, Zombie Zombie, Chateau Marmont etc: we clearly haven’t finished skanking and fist-pumping to sounds from the French Touch.
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